An important distinction is that Déjà vu is experienced during an event, not before.

Precognitive experiences -- if they are real -- show things that will happen in the future,
not things that you've already experienced.

Precognition

Precognition is the direct knowledge or perception of the future, obtained through

extrasensory means. Precognition is the most frequently reported of all extrasensory
perception (ESP) experiences, occurring most often (60 percent to 70 percent) in dreams.
It may also occur spontaneously in waking visions, auditory hallucinations, flashing
thoughts entering the mind, and the sense of "knowing." Precognitive knowledge also may be
induced through trance, channeling, mediumship, and divination.

Usually the majority of precognitive experiences happen within a forty-eight hour

period prior to the future event, most often it is within twenty-four hours. In rare cases
precognitive experiences occur months or even years before the actual event takes place.
Severe emotional shock seems to be a major factor in precognition. By a ratio of four-to-one,
most concern unhappy events, such as death and dying, illness, accidents, and natural
disasters. Intimacy is also a major factor, 80 to 85 percent of such experiences involve a
spouse, family member or friend with whom the individual has close emotional ties. The
remainder involves casual acquaintances and strangers, most of whom are victims in major
disasters such as airplane crashes or earthquakes.

The difference between precognition, premonition, and prophecy: premonition generally

involves knowledge of a future event while premonition involves the sense or feeling that
something is going to happen; whereas all prophecy is precognition, but not all
precognition is prophecy.

The reliance upon precognition reaches back to ancient times, when prophets and oracles
were sought for their access to the future. The Greeks considered the future immutable. Free
will, however, can change the perceived future, as seen in the many incidents of individuals
saving their lives and escaping disasters by changing their previously formed plans based on
precognitive information. Psychical researchers estimate that one-third to one-half of all
precognitive experiences may provide useful information to avert disasters.

This apparent ability to alter the perceived future makes precognition difficult to understand.
If precognition is a glimpse of the true or real future, then the effects are witnessed before the
causes. Such conditions do occur in quantum physics. The most popular theory holds that
precognition is a glimpse of a possible future that is based upon present conditions and
existing information, and which may be altered depending upon acts of free will. That theory
implies the future can cause the past, a phenomenon called "backward causality" or "retro-
causality."

A different and controversial theory contends that the precognitive experience itself unleashes
a powerful psychokinetic (PK) energy, which then brings the envisioned future to pass. Such
self-fulfilling prophecies were examined in the 1960s by the London psychiatrist J. A. Barker,
who contended in his book, Scared to Death, that people who died in the manner and at the
time predicted by fortune-tellers were literally "scared to death" and contributed somehow to
their own demise. Barker studied more precognitions surrounding the coal slide disaster in
1966, at Aberfan, Wales, which killed 144 people. He established the British Premonitions
Bureau, which collected precognitive data in order to avert disasters. Barker succeeded in
finding a number of "human seismographs" who tuned in regularly to disasters but were
unable to accurately pinpoint the times.

Despite the difficulty in understanding precognition, it is the easiest form of extrasensory

perception to test in the laboratory. J. W. Dunne, a British aeronautics engineer, undertook the
first systematic study of precognition in the early twentieth century. In 1927, he published the
classic An Experiment with Time, which contained his findings and theories. Dunne's study
was based on his personal precognitive dreams, which involved both trivial incidents in his
own life and major news events appearing in the press the day after the dream. When first
realizing that he was seeing the future in his dreams, Dunne worried that he was "a freak." His
worries soon eased when discovering that precognitive dreams are common; he concluded,
that many people have them without realizing it, perhaps because the do not recall the details
or fail to properly interpret the dream symbols.

Dunne's Theory of Serial Time proposes that time exists in layers on dimensions, each of
which may be viewed in different perspectives from different layers. The origin of all layers is
Absolute Time, created by God. Needless to say, the scientific community rejected Dunne's
theory.

J. B. Rhine and Louisa Rhine began the next significant systematic research of precognition in
the 1930s at the Parapsychology Laboratory at Duke University. J. B. Rhine's original goal
was to prove telepathy, but his experiment with ESP cards also revealed precognition and PK;
however when other perused psychical researchers Rhine's work, precognition continued
being an ongoing research project.

One peculiarity concerning precognition is that one rarely perceives one's own death; perhaps
one explanation is the trauma it too great for the ego to accept. Some notable exceptions do
exist: Abraham Lincoln dreamed of his own death six weeks before his assassination.
However, his dream was not of being shot and dying, but of being an observer after the fact.
He saw a long procession of mourners entering the White House. When he entered himself
and passed the coffin, he was shocked to find himself looking at his own body. American
presidents John Garfield and William McKinley experienced foreknowledge of their deaths.
A.G.H.

Sources:

Guiley, Rosemary Ellen. Harper's Encyclopedia of Mystical and Paranormal Experience, New York:
HarperCollins, 1991, pp. 463-464

Déjà vu

This is a term that designates disorientation in time in which a person feels that he has
been to an unknown place before, or has previously experienced a situation, or met a
person before. Déjà vu is an unexpected sensation of familiarity that applies to events,
experiences, sensory impressions, dreams, thoughts, statements, desires, emotions,
dreams, visits, the act of reading, the state of knowing, and, in general, the
circumstances of living. The term is French for "already seen," and was first used to give a
description to such experiences in 1876 by E. Letter Boirac, who called it "le sensation du
déjà vu." In 1896, F. L. Arnaud introduced it to science. There is no adequate English
equivalent for the term "déjà vu."

The sensation of déjà vu has been found to be a common psychological experience. According
to a poll conducted in 1986 by the National Opinion Research Council of the University of
Chicago, 67 percent of Americans reported instances of déjà vu, up from 58 percent in 1973.
In other studies the phenomenon has been reported experienced more among women than
men, and more among younger people than older people.

There is a wide variance in theories explaining déjà vu. Some psychologists refer to it as
"double cerebration." As early as 1884, theories were advanced suggesting that one
hemisphere of the brain received information a split second earlier that the other half. In 1895,
the English psychical researcher Frederic W. H. Myers theorized that the subconscious mind
registered information sooner than the conscious mind. The speculation of a biological
process for déjà vu, if there is any, has not been proven.

Those believing in reincarnation theorize that déjà vu is caused by fragments of past-life

memories being jarred to the surface of the mind by familiar surroundings or people. Others
theorize that the phenomenon is caused by astral projection, or out-of-body experiences
(OBEs), where it is possible that individuals have visited places while in their astral bodies
during sleep. The sensation may be also connected to the fulfillment of a condition as seen of
felt in a premonition. Other possible explanations are clairvoyance and telepathy.

Others say déjà vu is a product of the collective unconscious as theorized by psychiatrist

Carl G. Jung. They speculate that déjà vu occurs when one draws on the collective memories
of humankind. Jung himself had an intense déjà vu experience during his first trip to Africa.
While looking out a train window he felt as if he was returning to the land of his youth of five
thousand years earlier. He described it in Memories, Dreams, Reflections (60) as "recognition
of immemorially known."

However, many researchers are cautious when dealing with instances of déjà vu because
of the chance the person who experienced the sensation may have read or seen
something that is now in his unconsciousness that triggers the impression. The most
reliable subjects of are young children. A.G.H.

Sources: 9, 400; 29, 144.